I.

Ulysses follows the direction of Circe, indeed he is propelled by the

wind which she sends, to the "confines of the Ocean stream," to the

limits of this terrestrial Upperworld. Here is the land of the

Cimmerians, "hid in fog and in cloud," which veils the realm of the

dead; here the sun sends no beam, either rising or setting. Again it is

possible that the poet may have heard some dim account of the regions

of the extreme North. But the significance of the Cimmerians is to

shadow forth the dark border-land between life and death, which is here

that between the limited and the unlimited. We see the strong attempt

of the poet to get beyond limitation in its twofold appearance: first

he will transcend the external boundary of the Homeric horizon, that of

the sea stretching far to the westward; still more emphatic is his

effort to transcend the limits of finite thinking and to reach an

infinite realm, which is the goal of the spirit. He sweeps out of

sensuous space, yet the poetic imagination has to remain in space after

all, though it be a new space of its own creation. In like manner, he

has to give the disembodied souls some finite nourishment in the shape

of food and blood, in order that they become real. We feel in these

dark Cimmerian limits his wrestle to pass over to the supersensible by

thought.

I. The Present is represented by Ulysses and his companions, who now

perform the rites consisting of a sacrifice and prayer to "the nations

of the dead." We may find in the libation of "mingled honey, sweet

wine, and water," a suggestion of the tissues and fluids of the body,

while the blood of the sacrificed animals hints the principle of

vitality. When the disembodied spirit tastes these elements, it gets a

kind of body again, sufficient at least to be able to speak. That the

sheep must be black is curiously symbolical, hinting the harmony

expressed in the color of the animal and of Hades.

The souls "came thronging out of Erebus," eager to communicate. This

aspiration must thus be their general condition; they wish to hear from

us as much as we wish to hear from them. Hence there must be a

selection, which involves a new rite, the flaying and the burning of

the carcasses of the animals along with "prayer to Pluto and

Proserpine" king and queen of the Underworld. Yet this choice requires

activity from the hero, who has to draw his sword and keep off the

crowd of spirits, till the right one comes, the Theban seer Tiresias.

Thus is the Past linked into the Present, which to receive the

communications of the departed by means of a ritual, in whose symbolism

we see the effort of the living to know the Beyond. Now occurs a

curious incident: Ulysses beholds his companion Elpenor, dead, yet

unburned, and hears his first message. This soul can still speak, and

be seen; it hovers half way between the two worlds, having still a

material phase of the body which has not yet been burnt. Elpenor tells

the nature of his death: "some deity and too much wine" did the

thing--a combination which is usually effective in Homer. An unhappy

condition, suspended between matter and spirit; he begs that it be

ended. But the poor fellow has another request which shows the longing

of the humblest Greek--the longing for the immortality of fame. "Make a

tomb beside the seashore for me, an unfortunate man, of whom posterity

may hear." Thus he too will live in the mouths of men; wherein we catch

possibly a gleam of Homer himself, who has certainly erected an

imperishable monument to Elpenor, voicing the aspiration of the soul

even in Hades.

It is the hint of a deep maternal instinct that Anticleia, "my mother

deceased" comes at once to the blood and wishes communication. But

Ulysses must first hear Tiresias, the strongest ties of Family are

subordinate to the great purpose. Surely all are now ready to listen to

the Past with its message; here comes its spirit, voiced with a fresh

power.

II. We have just had the Present, and in the case of Elpenor, the

immediate Past, which is not yet wholly gone. Next we take a leap to

the Past of long ago, to the Pre-Trojan time, whose spirits will

appear. Two sets of them, divided according to sex into man and woman,

we behold. But the man here is the prophet, hence what he says belongs

to the Future, into which Ulysses now gets a glimpse.

Thus both Future and Past are given their place in the supersensible

realm, both being abstractions from the Present, which is the reality,

the world of the senses. Yet that which is abiding and eternal knows

not Past, Present, or Future, or knows them all equally, having that

which is common to them all, being indeed the principle of them all. In

a sense we may say that Tiresias is Past, Present and Future, he is the

voice of the Past speaking in the Present foretelling the Future. Then

the Famous Women come forth, whose fame causes them to appear now and

to be recorded. Thus the poet takes the two ancient sets and suggests

that which underlies them both and makes them ever present.

1. Tiresias, though he spans the three dimensions of Time, is

essentially the prophet, and so his stress is upon the Future. His body

has been long dead, but his mind is left in its untrammeled activity;

he may be considered as the purest essence of spirit. No senses

obstruct his vision, he sees the eternal and unchangeable law; yet he

must throw it into images and apply it to special cases. What a

conception for a primitive poet! We feel in this figure of Tiresias

that Homer himself is prophetic, foreshadowing the pure ideas or

archetypal forms of Plato, and that he, in his struggle for adequate

expression of thought, is calling for, and in fact calling forth, Greek

philosophy.

Tiresias speaks at first without drinking of the blood, yet he has to

drink of it to tell his prophecy. This little contradiction is not

vital, let it not trouble us. The prophetic announcement to Ulysses

includes four special cases. First, the Hero must have his struggle

with Neptune on his way homeward, the God will avenge the blinding of

his son, though that blinding had to take place; every man who

overcomes a great power, even a natural power, will get the backstroke

of his own deed. The very ship of Ulysses, which defies Neptune,

exposes itself to a conflict which it might avoid, did it not undertake

to master the God's element; such is the penalty of all victory.

Secondly, he must keep down appetite, particularly at the Trinacrian

Isle, and not slay the Oxen of the Sun, else the penalty will follow

there too. Not to keep down passion and appetite is clearly to eat of

those oxen in some way, which will be more carefully scrutinized

hereafter. Then, thirdly, "thou shalt avenge the violent deeds of the

Suitors, when thou hast returned home."

The common ground in these three cases of prophetic insight is

retribution for the act done there above on earth. The penalty is as

certain in the future as it has been in the past; violation brings

punishment. Ulysses has had that experience often; note it is told him,

or, if you wish to think the matter in that way, he tells it to himself

for his own future experience. So the Prophet sees the universal law,

he knows what abides in all the fleeting appearances of the world.

Ulysses also, were he to descend into the depths of his own soul, would

find the same prophecy; indeed this descent into Hades is also the

descent into himself, as well as into the outer supersensible world.

The hero in his intellectual journey has gone far, we can now behold

him near the eternal verities.

But the fourth statement of the Prophet is here too, it is the word of

promise. When this last conflict with the Suitors is over, then be

reconciled with Neptune by a fitting sacrifice (which means that

Ulysses should quit the watery element) give hecatombs to the

Immortals, recognize them and their rule. Then serene old age will take

thee off remote from the sea and all struggle, among a happy people,

whom thou hast made happy. Such is the promise, extending quite beyond

the limits of the Odyssey, which ends not at the death of Ulysses, but

with his last conflict. So there is hope amid all this struggle, hope

of becoming the complete man, who has reached harmony with the Gods,

with his people, and with himself.

In such fashion Tiresias calls into vision the course of the entire

poem, and reaches even beyond it, embracing the whole life of Ulysses,

till he too descends for the last time into Hades. Verily the prophet

is Past, Present and Future; his true abode is in the realm of pure

spirit. He foretells, but the Future is prefigured as the outcome of

what is universal; it must be so and not otherwise, else is the world a

chaos. Thus Tiresias is put at the beginning, he being the typical

person of this Underworld, in which the deities, Pluto and Proserpine,

do not appear, being held in the dark background. The prophet telling

his prophecy is the very Figure of the Supersensible.

But again let us be reminded that these hints of pure universal thought

are borne to us in images, in particular shapes, whereby ambiguity

rises, and meaning runs double. Nevertheless the true-hearted reader

will go down with the old poet into Hades, and there behold in these

images things which lie beyond the senses; he will behold the very

spirit of ancient Tiresias.

2. Having seen the Man, Ulysses is next to behold the Famous Women of

the Past, which is still Pre-Trojan with one exception. Examples from

all the relations of the woman in the Family are given: the mother, the

maiden, the wife. Tragic and happy instances are brought before

us--ideal forms taken from the ancient Mythus of Hellas, and begetting

in later times a prodigious number of works of art, in poetry,

sculpture and painting. Here they are put into Hades, the place of the

spirit unbodied, which will hereafter take on body in the drama, in the

statue, and in the picture. Ulysses witnesses these shapes in advance,

and gives their idea, which is to be realized in the coming ages of

Hellas. Truly is Homer the primordial Hellenic seer, he who sees and

sets forth the archetypal forms of the future of his race. Undoubtedly

he drew from mythical stores already existent, but he ordered them,

shaped them anew, and breathed into them the breath of eternal life. No

wonder the universal Greek hero must go to Hades to see these forms of

the Past which are, however, to live afresh in the Future.

We must also consider the audience of the singer. Who are present?

First of all, Arete, mother and wife, together with Nausicaa, the

maiden, to these he is specially singing. Their importance in the

Phaeacian world has been already indicated; naturally they wish to hear

of woman in the Family. Accordingly this portion of the Eleventh Book,

the catalogue of Famous Women, or Homer's "Legende of Good Women," is

organized after the relations of domestic life. Three classes are

suggested: the mothers; the maidens and the wives, of the grey

aforetime.

But by all means the glory and the stress of the song are given to the

mothers; the other two classes are very briefly dismissed, as being

essentially described in the first. Arete is indeed the grand center

and end of womanhood; Nausicaa as maid is but a transitory phase, and

as wife she is to become mother, and then take her supreme place in the

chain which upholds and perpetuates humanity. So the old Greek poet

must have thought; was he very far from right?

_a._ The first of these mothers to appear is Anticleia, the mother

of the Hero Ulysses, of the Hero who has made this remarkable

voyage to the world beyond, of its kind the supreme heroic act done

by a living mortal. She, however, belongs to the immediate Past,

and thus corresponds to the man, Elpenor, in the previous section,

though she of course has been buried. Note, therefore, this mark of

symmetrical structure.

It is the beautiful instinct of the mother, that she flits in the

ghost-world to her son at once, when the chance is afforded. She

has already appeared, even before Tiresias came; now she is the

first after that prophet, who gives directions to Ulysses

supplicating: "Tell me, O Prophet, how shall my mother recognize me

as her son." Ulysses learns much from her about Ithaca, especially

about his father Laertes, who now never goes to the town but stays

in the fields, "with a great sorrow in his heart, desiring thy

return, while old age weighs hard upon him." Such is the father,

still living, whom Ulysses may yet see.

The mother died from longing for her son and "the memory of his

gentleness;" still her longing brings her to him in the life

beyond. The great revelation is concerning the future state: the

soul is immortal, this fact Ulysses is to tell in Phaeacia. The

strong desire to behold the loved ones who have passed away is

indeed the impulse; but they too return, though insubstantial. It

is the primary groundwork of faith in immortality--this feeling of

the domestic relation affirming that it is eternal and cannot be

broken by death. Still the mother is but a ghost and cannot be

embraced; this the son has to accept, though he would have her in

flesh and blood.

_b._ At once there is the transition to the famous mothers of

legend--"wives and daughters of Heroes" says the poet, with, an eye

to his audience, which has men in it also, so he does not mention

mothers, though they are the burden of his strain. Here follows a

Catalogue of Women, giving them their due place in the genealogy

and destiny of distinguished houses. Three groups of these mothers

we may distinguish.

First is the group of mortal women who were embraced by some god,

and gave birth to heroic offspring. Tyro met Neptune and brought

forth Pelias and Neleus; from the latter sprang Nestor who connects

the Pre-Trojan and Trojan ages, since he appears both in the Iliad

and Odyssey. In the Third Book of the latter epos we have already

seen Nestor sacrificing to his divine ancestor; so the present

passage has its pertinence to the total poem. In the same group are

Antiope and Alemena, the latter of whom was the mother of Hercules,

whose father was Zeus. At the end of the present Book, Hercules

himself will appear as the supreme example of the Greek Hero.

Such were three typical mothers, famed in Hellenic legend, being

the women who bore Heroes, the offspring of Gods. It was deemed the

highest function of the Greek mother to bring forth a Hero, the

child of divinity, with an immortal portion. This view, in its

purely sensuous aspect, is dubious enough to the modern ethical

mind, still its real meaning must be looked at with sympathetic

vision, which sees therein the divine descent into mortal flesh, a

mythical utterance of the faith that the great man is the son of

God. The Christian view universalizes this conception, holding that

all men, and not merely the Heroes, are God's children. Yet the

Christian world has also retained its faith in the Son of God, son

by a mortal woman, which faith the old Greek had too, and expressed

in his way. Thus we may extract out of this Homeric account

something more than divine license; it has indeed a wonderful

pre-Christian suggestiveness, and gives a glimpse of the movement

of Universal Religion.

The second group of famous mothers are mortal women with mortal

husbands. The wedded wife brings up now the domestic relation,

which is passingly introduced by the spouse of Hercules, Megara,

who is simply mentioned. The two chief women of the group are

Epicaste and Chloris, the one supremely tragic in her motherhood,

the other reasonably happy. Epicaste is mother of OEdipus, who

marries her after slaying his own father who is her husband, both

deeds being done in ignorance; thus the closest domestic ties are

whelmed into guilt and tragedy, whereof Sophocles has made a

world-famous use, in his two dramas on the subject of OEdipus.

Chloris is, on the contrary, the mother of Nestor, not a tragic

character by any means; also she is mother of Pero, the beautiful

maiden, "whom all the people around were wooing," and who was

happily won by an heroic deed. Mark the interest of those

listeners, Arete and Nausicaa, mother and daughter in this tale.

Thus the two women, Epicaste and Chloris, have opposite destinies,

and show the sharp contrasts of life.

In the third group are two mothers who have a double honor; each

has borne twins and heroic ones at that; moreover the Gods again

enter the domestic relation of mortals. Leda's sons are "Castor the

horseman, and Pollux the boxer," the first being mortal, the second

immortal, and reputed son of Zeus, who permitted the immortal

brother to share his immortality with his mortal brother; hence

"every other day they both are alive, and every other day they both

are dead." Again the divine gives itself to the human in the spirit

of true brotherhood; the son of Zeus takes on the ills of mortality

through fraternal love. The second mother of this group is

Iphidameia, who declares Neptune to be the father of Otus and

Ephialtes, of her monstrous twins, "who at the age of nine years

threatened war upon the Gods," and proposed to storm heaven by

piling Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion on top of that. Such is

the contrast: one set of sons is noble, worthy, and "receive honor

like unto Gods;" the other set is defiant, assailing the divine

order, and are slain by the arrows of Apollo "ere the down

blossomed beneath their temples, and covered their chins with

tender furze."

_c._ Such, then, is the account of the mothers, the women who have

borne children famous in legend. They have taken up nearly the

whole of the present catalogue; the wives and maidens now come in

for brief mention, forming two groups, three persons to the group.

The poet is impartial, he introduces the faithful woman, Ariadne,

and the faithless woman, Eriphyle; in the one case man is the

betrayer of woman, and in the other case woman is the betrayer of

man. Possibly in Ariadne may be a little hint for Nausicaa, saying,

Beware.

But the singer is tired and sleepy; moreover has he not told the

essence of the matter in this portion of his song? He at once

dismisses any further account of famous women, "wives and daughters

of Heroes," whom he saw in Hades. Nausicaa and Arete have had their

share, wonderful has been their interest in the struggles and

sufferings of their sex; they feel in themselves the possibility of

such conflicts. These ideal shapes of the olden time, product of

the myth-making Imagination, are types, are the ghosts of Hades

which Ulysses must see and know, ere he return to the Upperworld.